Yesterday morning the UK’s eight living former primeh ministers assembled at the Cenotaph for Remembrance Sunday. Here was a reminder of the volatility of the last decade as the Conservatives cycled through more leaders than any governing party had before.
Keir Starmer’s Labour was meant to end all this. “Stability is change,” declared the Prime Minister and his cabinet with one voice. But the background hum of leadership speculation – so familiar from the Tory years – has resumed. Will the outcome be any different?
Six weeks ago, Starmer delivered a conference speech that most observers agreed had won him a reprieve until next May’s elections. Yet matters have worsened in the short time since. Labour’s poll ratings have reached a new nadir – the party now averages 18 per cent – and its vote in the Caerphilly by-election collapsed to just 11 per cent. The question now being asked by MPs from all wings is how long this can go on.
“Why should we sacrifice hundreds of councillors and Scotland and Wales?” asks one MP. “You don’t go lower than Liz Truss and bounce back,” remarks another.
Next spring’s elections are one reason why discussions about Starmer’s future have accelerated. Labour fears a missed opportunity to retake Holyrood from the SNP, an electoral massacre in Wales and historic defeats in London and its other urban heartlands.
The other reason is the Budget. As Starmer and Reeves prepare to break Labour’s defining manifesto pledge by raising income tax, even sympathetic ministers question whether they can lead Labour into the next general election from this position. Though it is Reeves in the firing line, the Chancellor and Starmer’s fates are viewed by friends and foes alike as intertwined. “If Keir sacks Rachel, it won’t be long before he’s next,” says one minister.
Parliamentary supporters of Wes Streeting have independently canvassed MPs on whether they would prefer him or Angela Rayner as leader. Other names routinely mentioned include Shabana Mahmood, Bridget Phillipson, Darren Jones, Lucy Powell, Louise Haigh, the new co-leader of the soft-left Tribune group, and, as I first reported several months ago, Ed Miliband, who enjoys a +71 approval rating among Labour members.
There might be no agreed plan to remove Starmer but allies now take the threat seriously enough to mount a proactive defence. “Colleagues need to think through what they’re actually talking about here because if they’re talking about a leadership challenge to a sitting Prime Minister a year in, that is not consequence-free. It would cause absolute havoc in the markets and make us look ridiculous to the world and to the public,” a minister close to Starmer warns.
“You’re not messing around with the leader of the opposition here or a deputy leadership contest. The impact of it would be huge. A leadership contest at the moment would just kill the party stone dead.”
Confronted by a restive party and country, No 10 and No 11 are increasingly prepared to embrace the left-leaning character of another tax-and-spend Budget. “We’ve had 14 years of trying the right-wing approach,” says one Reeves aide. “It’s more left wing than the last Labour government, that’s for sure,” remarks a senior Starmer adviser of an administration that has revived public ownership and defied calls from businesses to dilute its workers’ rights bill.
Downing Street’s view remains that Starmer’s fortunes will only improve when he can point to more concrete results in a country weary of squeezed living standards and crumbling public services. The disquieting question for the Prime Minister is how much longer he can afford to wait.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[Further reading: How to sell a tax rise]
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